Wild Indigo (19 page)

“Somebody poisoned Mountain.”

“Son of a bitch! Is he…?”

“He's at the animal clinic in Taos. He's barely hanging on.”

“What happened?”

“I don't know exactly. It's—I'll have to tell you about it another time. I'm waiting to get a ride into the pueblo right now.”

“Oh, no. Not again.”

“It's okay, I've actually been invited to the family feast. They're having someone pick me up at the gas station—you know the one in Cascada Azul where you and I talked the other night?”

“Yeah. Just the same, be careful. Where can I reach you if I get any information on this Yellow Hawk guy?”

“I'm going back to the vet clinic after the feast. I'll be there with Mountain.”

“Okay, well, I'll get back to you then.”

“Wait. Diane?”

“Yeah?”

“One more thing. Is there any way you can check and see if Sam Dreams Eagle is really at the Indian School in Santa Fe?”

“Why? You think he's rolled up in this?”

“I'm sure of it.”

“How do you know?”

“I just have a big damn buzz.”

In the small kitchen of Grandma Bird and Grandpa Nazario's adobe home, the stove exuded a tremendous heat. Stoked with wood, there was a pot on every burner, and the oven was full of feast dishes. I found a large plastic bowl on the shelf and started assembling my shrimp salad.

Momma Anna appeared over my shoulder. “Why you bring that?” she grunted.

I turned and gave her the formal greeting of respect. Then I answered, “It's a shrimp salad. I thought something cool would be good—it's been so hot today, and that warm wind…”

She looked at the bowl as if green slime were swimming in it. “Why you bring that? You know what we eat! We eat meat. We eat chili, posole, stew. Not shrimp salad! Indun not eat shrimp salad.”

All the women in the kitchen stopped to observe this discourse. They stared at me.

I hung my head, trying to appear ashamed, but in truth I was angry. I swallowed, then said, “I'm sorry. I'll take it back with me; we don't have to put it on the feast table.”

Momma Anna gave another grunt and moved through the crowd of cooks to the stove, where she tasted her red chili with elk meat. “Indun eat meat,” she said again, not looking at me. Then she turned to a forty-gallon drum that was lined with a black plastic bag. She reached into the sack and pulled out round loaves of Pueblo bread that had no doubt been baked by the women long before dawn this morning. When she had placed about a dozen of them on the table, she and Yohe began slicing the bread.

After what seemed like an interminable silence, the other women resumed their cooking and preparations for the feast.

I stepped out the back door of the kitchen to catch my breath, wishing I had my car so I could leave.
I wish I hadn't had to ride here with Serena. Now I'll have to wait until she's ready to take me back.

The men were stacking wood in a square tower on the hard dirt for a small bonfire. They talked softly among themselves and laughed. Anna's son Frank looked across the yard at me and gave me the slightest nod. His uncles Eddie and Pete were splitting wood. Both much younger than their sister Anna, they were quite near to Frank's age. Several teenaged boys stood under the brush arbor and laughed and pawed at one another. They looked at me and scanned my figure. This was no place for a woman. I went back inside.

By now, the ladies were ready to serve. The same table, constructed of plywood and sawhorses, held steaming dishes of food, baskets of prune pies and cookies, and plastic pitchers of Kool-Aid. These filled the center with barely enough room for the foam plates that rimmed the outer edges of the table. Heaping platters of roasted pork, stewed beef and vegetables, and sliced elk meat exuded an earthy scent. Big casseroles of sweet potatoes,
supa,
posole, and red chili added color and spice. A towering tray of sopapillas and the sliced loaves of the horno-baked bread spread so wide that three women had to work to rearrange the dishes already on the table to make a place for it. Momma Anna took my hand and pulled me toward the kiva fireplace in the corner of the main room. “Your face all better. You do what I tell you?” She clutched her
jish
through her shirt, referring to the root she had given me.

“I did, Momma Anna, but something went wrong.”

“What went wrong?”

“I don't know. I ended up on the floor, passed out, and Mountain…” I had to stop and swallow hard to keep the emotion down. “He ended up poisoned somehow. He almost died, he may still—”

“What poison? Who?”

“I don't know, I was burning the—the root you gave me, and it all happened then.”

“Where the wolf now?”

“He's at the vet clinic. He's so weak, Momma Anna.” I could feel tears welling.

“What happen?”

“I don't know. He's in a coma.”

“Coma? What that?”

“He's not awake, he doesn't respond. He's just barely alive, not aware. The vet said someone gave him atropine.”

“What that?”

“I don't know—a drug of some kind. I thought maybe he got the other half of that root you gave me. I can't find it.”

Momma Anna opened her mouth in shock. “You lost your cachana? How you do that?”

“I was burning some with the red chile seeds and the salt, and then I passed out on the floor. When I woke up, Mountain had been poisoned. I thought maybe he had eaten the root.”

“No, no, that not what cachana do—maybe you breathe too much, but it not poison. Sound like someone give that wolf
ololiuhqui.
”

“What's that?”

“Only medicine man can give. Very deadly if not done right. My brother Yellow Hawk only one right now can do it.”

Just then, Grandpa Nazario rose and held his palm up in the air, signaling the beginning of a prayer. Yohe hurried outside to gather up the men. They filed in quietly, removing their hats, squeezing against one another and the walls of the room.

Momma Anna let go of my arm and worked her way through the crowd to her father. She whispered in Nazario's ear. He nodded. Then Anna took one of the gas lamps down from its nail hanger on a viga that spanned the roof. She lit the lamp and held it up as Grandpa prayed.

I had been to many feasts, and as Grandpa Nazario prayed in Tiwa, I knew he was calling the ancestors. He was naming them all, inviting them to feast with them, and asking for their blessing on the gathering. We stood, hand in hand, for what seemed like a half hour while this incantation went forth. Then someone passed me a large glass of water. I took my sip and passed it on, as I had been taught to do. We all drank from the same cup. When we were finished, Auntie took a plate and put a tiny bit of each food from the table onto it, making an offering to these ancestors that were just summoned. She started to take the dish toward the kitchen, and I knew that she would then take it outside—to the sunset—where she would leave it for the spirits to feast upon. But before she could work her way through the gathered crowd, Momma Anna handed the lamp to someone and said loudly, “Wait. Look what my daughter bring.” She pressed her way into the kitchen and emerged with my shrimp salad held above her head. She set it proudly down on the table, pushing aside one of the Styrofoam plates to make room for it. “I not eat anything but this. My daughter make this shrimp salad for feast.”

A pinch of lettuce was added to the spirit plate, everyone grunted in agreement that it looked good, and the feast began, with the elders and little children eating first while the others waited on them.

When most of the family had eaten, Serena, Yohe, and I sat down to have some food. The table was still full of young folks, and Hunter sat at the far end from us, teasing the teenaged boys and making them laugh. Serena said, “You know my dad prayed for your wolf tonight.”

I turned to face her. “He did?”

“Yes. Anna told him, right before the prayer, that your wolf is sick or dying or something.”

I lowered my head and pushed a forkful of posole around the plate. “Yes, he's in a bad way. But I'm grateful for the prayers.”

“We will all be praying for him. And for you. You didn't eat hardly anything. Lucky the old ones already ate and didn't see you. Otherwise, they'd make you eat. You just been playing with that little bit of food on your plate.”

The front door opened, and tribal police chief Epifanio Moon Eagle and another man I didn't recognize stepped into the room. Moon Eagle was nodding his head, bowing and smiling, greeting all the family, when his eyes lit on me. His face grew stern and he said something to one of the women in Tiwa. A small crowd gathered around him, and there was much chatter. Momma Anna was wringing her hands and pushing her lips out in a scowl as she argued with the policeman.

I stood up, wondering what would happen to me.

But Hunter got up from the end of the table, made his way through the welcoming committee of women, and spoke to Moon Eagle. I saw him gesture with a wide sweep of his hand, as if to take in the scope of the whole family. Then Contreras made another gesture toward Grandma Bird and Grandpa Nazario, who were sitting on the edge of the bed alongside the woodstove. Moon Eagle finally nodded his head, relenting. The women busied themselves with rewelcoming him—Serena got him a plate, Yohe took his hat, and Auntie ushered him to one of the benches at the plywood table.

I sat back down, not certain what to do.

Moon Eagle dipped a sopapilla in some red chili and looked across the table at me. “You got a reprieve tonight. I guess the old ones all want you at their feast, so I'm gonna turn my head, pretend like I didn't see you. I hope you didn't drive here and somebody spots that broken-up Jeep somewhere and reports it.”

“I didn't drive,” I said. Then I picked up my plate and cup and started for the kitchen. But I stopped alongside Moon Eagle and bent down to speak quietly to him. “Do you know anything about what's happened to Anna's brother Yellow Hawk?”

Moon Eagle swung his big frame and looked directly at me. “They say he left his horse standing out in the yard, tied to a tree, and went off to fast and pray.”

“Don't you think that's odd—that he would abandon his horse like that?”

The chief blotted the chili from his lips. He ran his tongue over his teeth. “Do you know Yellow Hawk?”

“A little. I met him once at a family wedding, and I see him sometimes on feast days. We've only spoken once.”

“But you know he's the peyote chief, right?”

“Yes, someone told me that.”

“Well, they don't get to be peyote chief by walking the straight and narrow, if you know what I mean.”

“I guess I don't follow you.”

“I mean, Yellow Hawk is an old man. He gets a little absentminded. He's done a lot of ceremony in the past few weeks, done a lot of sweats, taken some herbs.”

I thought for a moment. “I think people are worried about him.”

Moon Eagle turned back to his plate. “Well, if they are, they should talk to me about it. Now I'm gonna have a little more of this red chili, if you don't mind.” He turned back to his plate.

Most of the women were working in the kitchen, so I went to join them. Momma Anna handed me a bucket and told me to go for more water. I headed out the door and walked along the adobe wall to avoid the men at the bonfire out in the yard. The night was black beyond the gas lamps in the house and the sparks of the little fire. I felt around and finally found the rail for the steps over the wall and took them carefully down to the dirt alley below. I crossed to the corral and then searched in the dark for the pump. It took me a while to find my bearings. I pushed the lever up and down to prime the pump until the water began to flow. As I was filling the bucket, I noticed a light from the top of the wall. Serena called to me in a forced whisper, “Jamaica! Come quick!”

I fastened the handle down on the pump shaft and hoisted the heavy bucket. I trudged across the alley, trying not to slosh too much of the liquid out, and then I muscled my way up the stairs with the heavy load. “What?” I asked.

Serena lowered her small flashlight. “The governor is here. Eliseo Contreras. Anna told me to keep you out of sight so he won't see you. He's come to pay respects to my family. He's Hunter's brother, you know. Hunter likes you so much, he won't mention that you are here. But we have to stay away for a little while.”

Serena took the bucket of water to the kitchen and then we went back over the wall to the corral with a basket of food. We got in Serena's truck and she drove to the home of Jerome and Madonna Santana. “I know my sister is angry with her—that's why Madonna didn't come tonight. But she is still my niece,” Serena explained. “And little Angel is my godson as well as my great-nephew. I want him to share in the feast for his father's homecoming.”

We took the basket to the door. Serena opened it without knocking and called out, “Angel! Madonna! It's your auntie Serena.”

Angel came bounding down the stairs, wearing his earphones and carrying his portable CD player. He paused on the bottom step, pressed a button on the device, pulled the earphones out, and gave his great-aunt a hug. “Mommy just called,” he said, clearly excited. “She's done working, and she'll be home in a few minutes!”

Serena made her way to the kitchen, where she took the plastic bowls and bags out of the basket and began warming food. “You set the table,” she told me.

A glossy wood table dominated the small, unfinished dining room. Pink insulation and bare studs lined one wall. The other walls had been drywalled, but not mudded and taped. Angel pulled some place mats out of a drawer and helped me find paper napkins and flatware.

By the time Madonna walked in the door, we had a banquet set for the twosome. Angel knelt in one of the upholstered captain's chairs and played with a spoon. Madonna's eyes glistened as she took in the spread of feast dishes.

“My nephew has made his journey,” Serena said. She took a small dish and prepared another spirit plate, just as Auntie had done at Grandpa and Grandma's. As she took it outside, Madonna went to her son and they embraced.